Alternatives to cigarettes are slowly finding space in the market : Akshay Singhal

The market of smokers is in itself huge with about 108 million as of 2015 (BMJ Global Health) and is continuously growing in spite of numerous campaigns being done by the government.Shahid Akhter | ETHealthWorld | Updated: October 28, 2016, 11:12 IST

Alternatives to cigarettes are finding space in the market with various products being rolled out. One such product is Post Purification Filter (Ppuff) that is is fast catching up. ETHealthworld talks to Akshay Singhal, Founder of Log 9 Materials to know more about his recent product launch and its market response.

What made you think of Ppuff ? The concept and idea behind it.

The concept and idea behind it started with the vision of rolling out commercial applications of the wonder material graphene which in itself has numerous fields it could contribute in, especially healthcare and cleantech. Since the incorporation of Log 9 Materials in April, 2015 we have worked extensively on filtration materials, we were in fact developing an advanced Catalytic converter, the purpose of which is to remove toxic gases from vehicular fumes with improved efficiency.

During the product development phase of the converter, the idea of using the same material for toxins present in cigarette smoke came to mind. The idea came to mind after seeing the anti-smoking advertisement during a movie. Thus with some tweaks in the material and a lot of work done on the product development came the concept of PPuF, short for Post Purification Filter.

What are the market opportunities?

The market of smokers is in itself huge with about 108 million as of 2015 (BMJ Global Health) and is continuously growing in spite of numerous campaigns being done by the government. Thus alternatives to cigarettes are slowly finding space in the market with products like nicotine patches, e-cigarettes etc. But the problem associated with these products is that they alter the user experience totally. Thus a control measure is needed to target the harmful effects of smoking without affecting user experience, as for something which can be directly attached or incorporated in a cigarette. This is where our product can take over the health conscious market segment of smokers. Also the product will be available in a different variant to cater to hookahs and sheeshas which in themselves have a huge market in the middle-east.

Challenges and competition that you find ?

Although people have themselves become conscious for their health because of numerous campaigns run by various organizations stating the harms associated with cigarette smoking, but still making a consumer add to their smoking expense for health is the biggest challenge as of now. But such a challenge occurs for any product which enters a totally new market.Other problem currently being faced is the scalability wherein the demand of the product by the distributors is much more than the current capacity that we have. Thus we are looking for investment to scale up and already have good leads with various Venture firms and Networks.

Another challenge that we are preventing beforehand itself is fake products coming out in the future which would not have the same efficiency, and probably would not even do anything but could penetrate the market by keeping the same aesthetics. To prevent that we are focusing a lot on vendor relationships and the packaging of the product to make it stand apart.

What is your traction when it comes to revenue growth? (numbers) and your expectation ?

The product is just launched in the market and we have overwhelming demand. We expect to sell 15000 packs of 5 filters each in the first month. As mentioned earlier, current capacity is to manufacture 1000 packs/day, we hope that we would need to expand this capacity to 10000 packs/day within 6 months.

Your future plans ?

Currently the product is present in Gurgaon with expansions being done in Delhi NCR too. In the coming 3 months we’ll be expanding to other Tier-1 cities, especially metros. Also our R&D team is working on a variant of the product which can be used with hookahs as hookahs are supposedly more harmful than cigarettes. To cover the Indian market completely, we are accelerating our talks with investors to raise funding to scale our manufacturing and business.